


Mind Forest

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Being Lost, Deductions, Guides, Holding Hands, Mind Palace, Off the Grid, Touching, Wilderness, and found, into the wood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-28 20:05:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John comes home. Click. Sets the wood afire. Or no. The house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mind Forest

The trees, or the leaves, or the finest ribs; the vein, cuticle, mesophyll. What? Oh. The forest.

John comes home. Click. Sets the wood afire. Or no. The house. The tea. The winding path kitchen to sitting to sofa.

Sherlock’s hands are clasped, bark-bound. This is new. This is new growth. This is not.

Familiar.

“Sherlock are you alright?”

Two cups. Clink. Rough hand hovering, nearby, brow-level.

“Are you alive?”

And growing. The palace not far, not far, a trail of crumb (pastry) away.

“I see you’re breathing.”

Retreat.

Back to the chlorophylls. Where a killer stashed in cells his blade. Where a brother. Where a lover kissed another.

New loci; new genius. Each step greener than the last, deeper, oak-deeper, pluck from the unfamiliar the obvious, fruit, the bright drupes of the North American dogwood, the good English cherry the last clue.

_Yes!_

Oh. A crow. Wild pulse in the undergrowth.

A disturbance.

The green shoots are John's wry. (Smile.) Green-about-the-gills John after the pub, after …

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

It’s growing dusk.

A tumble.

His fingers caught in root-choked earth.

“Here.”

His lids lift to a torch. A map.

“Were you lost?”

Bemused. Blue-eyed.

“No.”

Home.

John’s hand on his hand on the verge.

A cuticle. A vein. The heart of the wood of the leaf and the bark.

 

**Author's Note:**

> "The clearest way to the Universe is through a forest wilderness."--John Muir
> 
>  [The Urban Wild Project, London](http://theurbanwildproject.org/index.html)


End file.
